The Hunter Inside

by David McGowan

  ‘Can you give me a printout of this document?’ O’Neill asked Doctor Jules, breaking the silence in the room that had existed for almost two minutes.

  ‘Of course,’ the doctor replied, before continuing, ‘do you know this person? You seem to have gone a little pale.’

  ‘Err…no,’ O’Neill replied. He had not expected this question from the doctor and groped for an answer. ‘I just haven’t had the time to eat yet today, that’s all.’

  ‘Sometimes you’ve got to make the time, Special Agent.’ He handed the printout to O’Neill.

  ‘Thanks, Doctor. Listen, I’ve got to go. There are a few things I need to check out back at base. But once again, thanks for your time.’

  ‘Don’t mention it, Special Agent. Just doing my job.’

  O’Neill wondered whether it was just a job, or whether Doctor Jules and he were unwittingly involved in something much larger. ‘If you need any more help, please don’t hesitate to call me,’ Doctor Jules said as O’Neill walked towards the door of the office.

  ‘I might take you up on that,’ he said, and exited the room, closing the door gently behind him.

  He walked quickly down the corridor and away from the office of Doctor Jules. While considering what would be the best course of action, he walked through the archway that had captivated him minutes before without even glancing upwards.

  Certainly, the first thing he’d do would be to get something to eat; he hadn’t lied to the doctor when he’d told him he hadn’t had the time to eat today. He would find a quiet place where he could look at the file Todd Mayhew had given him and see if anything stood out. At the very least he would be covering all possibilities; and police officers were always apt to learn something new on a case – no matter what their age or experience.

  He thought about another positive point of waiting before he went into the office to see what the computer could turn up that might support Todd Mayhew’s story. The later he went, the less people would be there to question him about what he was searching for. He certainly didn’t want to bump into his boss while he was there; Lineker would want answers, not theories; and as yet he had no answers to give. He wasn’t even sure if he was asking the right questions, and he was desperate to put some kind of order and plausible theory onto the recent events.

  Hoskins stood, gloomily staring down the road at something. He felt like the spare part of a toy that was never allowed out of its box. Always on the sidelines looking in, and never part of the action, he now looked at the face of his boss to see that he was giving nothing away and, despite the pre-knowledge that he would probably not receive an answer to his question, he asked, ‘What did DNA turn up?’

  O’Neill cast him an irritated look and snapped, ‘Nothing. No match.’

  ‘But that’s impossible,’ Hoskins exclaimed forcefully, ‘everybody who’s ever handled a…’

  O’Neill interrupted, raising his voice to drown out that of Hoskins. ‘Listen Hoskins. I know all the theories. I also know of things called long shots. Have you ever heard of those?’

  ‘Yes.’ Hoskins offered no argument. He knew he’d have more chance of finding things out and maybe even making progress on the case if he was not with O’Neill, a man who seemed to forget that they were on the same team.

  ‘You go back to the office,’ O’Neill said in a slightly less threatening tone. ‘If there’s any news send me a message on my cell phone. Okay?’

  ‘Sure Chief, but where are you going?’ Hoskins was a little worried about O’Neill. He was flitting from an angry tone to a conciliatory one, and he felt that people dealing with cases such as the ones that they were wrapped up in should be detached from their work and in control of their emotions.

  ‘I’m going somewhere to think. I need to try and get my head around this case,’ O’Neill told him, dropping his guard enough to seem almost human to Hoskins, before turning and walking towards his car.

  ‘Okay then Chief,’ Hoskins said as he watched O’Neill unlock the car and open the door. ‘But listen; will you call me if you have any news?’

  The question went unheeded, and O’Neill slammed the car door and started the engine, pulling away from the curb and driving past Hoskins with no more than a glance.

  There’s that guard again, Hoskins thought, and watched O’Neill’s car as it got smaller before eventually disappearing out of sight.

  *

  O’Neill drove two blocks, his stomach grumbling as he drove. After resolving to get food from the first available place he saw, he pulled into the small lot of a fast-food joint and purchased french fries and a hamburger. It was hardly gourmet food, but he was neither a gourmet nor a gourmand person. Food was food, and he ate what he had to eat to survive. At that moment it was food that would probably contrive against his survival, but he regularly flouted doctors who told him he needed to eat more healthily. His cholesterol was a problem, but at that moment starvation also felt like it could be a problem. He ripped the paper off one of the burgers and crammed the meat greedily into his mouth. He was so ravenous that he crammed in more than he could chew, and was forced to swallow chunks that came close to making him gag before continuing on their way to his stomach where they would be used for their energy and strength-giving qualities. After eating the entire hamburger in less than a minute and licking his fingers clean of the grease that had been deposited on them by the oily compound, he began to stuff the French fries into his mouth, pausing only for momentary mastication before swallowing and refilling his mouth in a process that saw him eat the fries almost as quickly as he had eaten the hamburger.

  The food made him feel better immediately, and he used a paper napkin to wipe his hands clean of the salt that had been liberally applied to the fries. He gathered up the remnants and refuse and placed them into the carrier he had been given when he’d purchased the meal, before getting out of the car and pushing the bag through the brightly colored swing-top lid of the establishment’s refuse collection point and returning to his vehicle.

  Once inside, he grabbed the white file that Mayhew had given him earlier at the Coffee House.

  This way is better, he thought, less chance of anybody seeing what I’m reading. He felt that if somebody did see what he was reading, they would think him mad. An FBI Special Agent who needed to turn to crazy off-the-wall theories in an effort to solve murders was not something the public at large were likely to place their faith in, and he satisfied himself that there was nobody in the vicinity that might take an interest in his actions, before settling back into the driver’s seat of the car and skipping past the title page he’d seen earlier.

  He scratched his forehead as he read the second page of the file. It spoke of the various parts that make up the human soul, and the interaction between different parts of the soul during life and after death.

  For O’Neill, a not very spiritual man of the Western world, it made little sense. The terminology and the theory was, literally at times, a foreign language to him, and as quickly as he had read a paragraph he found himself looking back at it, trying to determine its significance in terms of the spirit of Shimasou. It was not until he reached the end of the third page that Shimasou was actually mentioned, and O’Neill saw that Mayhew had simplified what he had read considerably when explaining it to the Special Agent.

  The fourth page of the file covered most of what Mayhew had told him, describing how Shimasou, once awoken, would take on human-like form, and seek to obliterate good in the world, bringing about evil by forming links with the minds and souls of those that it killed. By affecting the souls of these individuals, it would affect the souls of their blood relatives and begin to control them; using them for its own purpose and growing stronger and stronger, as it fed off their minds and eventually their bodies and souls.

  The fifth page of the file explained how the spirit of Shimasou stood for evil and was totally separated from good. Therefore, it only took evil and badness from the soul of its victims but, because of its huge and
growing strength and its status as a spirit, its thoughts, outlooks and actions would be one hundred fold those of its victims. Any morsel of hate in the victim would ensure that Shimasou was fed with enough hatred to wipe out a whole city. Any sense of guilt would not be even considered by Shimasou as that would be relative to its opposite; Shimasae, and without Shimasae being summoned to fight against Shimasou nothing would be able to stop it from taking over the world, as it forged links with more and more people as a direct result of its actions.

  This is damn serious stuff, O’Neill thought to himself, magnificently understating the significance of such a spirit if it were allowed to carry out its objectives. As he continued on, looking at a drawing of the statue that was said to hold the banished spirit of Shimasou, he actually felt himself beginning to take it more seriously.

  Mayhew had said that Wayans’ grandmother had brought a statue with her from China, and here was a drawing of a statue that was similar to the one he had described. Mayhew had also told how the spirit of Shimasou had tortured the grandmother of Paul Wayans. It had taken over her mind and driven her to suicide, such was its hunger to achieve its goals. Things matched up between the file that he read and Todd Mayhew’s story, and O’Neill could finally begin to employ his police training.

  When things matched up, there was a benefit in following up a lead, no matter how ludicrous it may sound. There was only one course of action that he could take. He would drive to the main FBI headquarters in Brooklyn, and check out John Riley’s family history. If he could find a link between the murder of Riley and Mayhew’s story, then the evidence would be compelling; he would have no option other than to fully believe Mayhew’s story.

  The second thing that he had to do was speak to Sandy Myers.

  If what the contents of the file said were true, then she was at great risk from Shimasou. If, on the other hand, it was O’Neill’s second theory that was correct, then others might be at risk from Sandy Myers. At least by considering the former option first he could either rule it out or begin to build up a wider picture of the case. He would be glad of either outcome. The case was stretching his resolve and, as he started the engine of his car and put it into gear, all that O’Neill really wanted to do was sleep. But he couldn’t sleep, and he was pretty certain that anybody else who was directly involved in this case would not be sleeping either.

  He turned out of the lot of the fast food restaurant and followed a sign that past experience told him would take him on the straightest route to Brooklyn. He paid no attention to the other motorists on the road; such was his concentration on the task in hand, and as a result received several angry honks of horns as he put his foot down and weaved in and out of the early afternoon traffic. This did not bother Special Agent O’Neill. He paid as much attention to the horns of cars he cut up and left seething in his wake as he did to the sparse scenery that was intersected by the asphalt that stretched out in front of him.

  O’Neill had only one thing on his mind. That was to reach Brooklyn in as quick a time as possible and this he achieved; slashing the time it would normally have taken in half, due to his take-no-prisoners style of driving.

  Both O’Neill and the car in which he had traveled were more than a little flushed by the time they arrived in Brooklyn. He pulled into the parking lot at the rear of the building and got out of the car before walking towards the front of the building, leaving it sizzling in his wake.

  If things ever settled down, he would get a new car; he thought he might as well spend some of his savings if he could not get any time off work to do anything else. One with air conditioning would be nice, he thought to himself as he pushed open the door and walked into the three-story building he usually avoided as much as possible due to his ongoing ill feeling towards his boss.

  Much to O’Neill’s distaste, it was Lineker whom he saw first as he attempted to blend into the surroundings of the busy room. It contained between twenty and thirty people, all actively chasing up leads or information on the many cases that they were currently working on.

  All were overworked, including O’Neill, despite his position, and he wondered what it must be like to be a sheriff in a small, quiet town in the middle of nowhere, as his red-faced boss came hurrying towards him across the office, knocking a stack of files from the hands of one of the secretaries without pausing to look back, and accosting O’Neill with a high pitched cry of, ‘Where have you been?’

  The superiority complex that Lineker had presumably gained from sitting in an office all day annoyed O’Neill, and the demanding tone in his voice made the big agent want to punch him. He looked away from the expectant gaze of his boss, and said, ‘Thinking’.

  ‘Thinking? You haven’t got time to think, O’Neill. Why did you send Hoskins back here?’ His voice again assumed a high pitch, and O’Neill looked back at him, noting his unusually red face. Normally he would have enjoyed seeing this, and would strive to wind him up as much as possible, but there were other things O’Neill needed to do.

  ‘I didn’t think he could help me at the time,’ O’Neill replied, intending to brush aside any aggravation by assuming a dull and non-confrontational tone. If Lineker thought he was being cocky he would have to suffer a twenty-minute lecture about working as part of a team that would almost definitely include a phrase like: ‘Collaboration ensures successful operations across our nation’, and he wasn’t sure that he could listen to a new millennium kind of assessment on working practices from a man who had not done any real field work in twenty years due to his devotion to a desk. He had his own idea of working practice that went something like: ‘Actions speak louder than words’, and he was pretty sure it was his assessment that would ensure progress and maybe even a result on this case. That was if they ever let him get on with it.

  Hoskins had by now made his way over to where the two men stood looking at one another, and waited to see what Lineker’s reaction was to O’Neill’s flippancy.

  ‘Right, O’Neill. Let’s get one thing straight here. Hoskins is working on this case with you whether you like it or not. He is not your personal assistant who looks after your vehicle for you. You got it?’

  Hoskins dropped his gaze in time to avoid the hateful stare O’Neill flashed in his direction as Lineker continued, ‘I want him with you every step of the way on this. As from now.’ He turned and stormed across the room and into his office, slamming the door behind him almost hard enough to break the glass. He was not prepared to listen to protestations from O’Neill.

  O’Neill looked back towards the blushing face of Hoskins and muttered, ‘Asshole’.

  Hoskins, determined not to have a confrontation with his boss, ignored the comment and said, ‘What can I do for you, Chief?’

  The last thing O’Neill wanted was Hoskins looking over his shoulder while he searched the database for details of John Riley’s relatives. He didn’t want him asking questions that he couldn’t answer, and the only way to get rid of him and ensure he could sneak out of the door when he had finished, was to send him to the depository where paper records of old files were kept.

  ‘I want you to go and find me the files for any murder from the last ten years that holds any similarities to the recent murders of John Riley and Paul Wayans. Anything from the surrounding areas, anything where a knife was used, or anything that went unsolved.’

  ‘But Chief…that’s gonna take hours. Wouldn’t the computer…’ O’Neill cut off Hoskins’ pleading in its infancy. He was always annoyed by agents who wanted only the glamour of working on big cases without the hard work that went with cracking them. ‘Hoskins, I’m going to be using the database to do some research myself. It’s either gonna take me hours, or it’s gonna take you hours to trawl through those files. So tell me. What’s it gonna be?’

  Hoskins knew this was a loaded question, regarding whether or not the next six months of his working life were going to be made hell by the bastard standing in front of him. He nodded, before beginning to make his way towar
ds the musty room that always gave him the spooks. The narrow bays between the high shelving made him feel claustrophobic, and the dust got up his nose and on his chest. His afternoon was not going to be a pleasant one.

  Neither was O’Neill’s.

  While Hoskins felt hard done by having to look through paper work, O’Neill would be placing himself directly at risk in his efforts to solve this case. If Hoskins knew about Shimasou he would probably be grateful to Sam O’Neill. If what O’Neill had read was true then he was, after all, trying to save the life of Hoskins.

  O’Neill waited until Hoskins was out of sight, before heading for the computer terminal placed in a cramped corner of the room. With Hoskins out of the way, and Lineker presumably chewing a valium in his office, he stood a good chance of being able to check the database without anybody taking an unwelcome interest in his actions.

  The office was such a beehive of activity that people did not have time to stop and wonder what he was looking for, and O’Neill pulled up a chair and sat down in front of the monitor that was almost permanently ready to assist fellow officers.

  For O’Neill, the FBI database was the best officer they had. Besides being crammed with knowledge it was also trustworthy. He didn’t feel as though he had to watch his back as far as the database went, and this was something he felt with no other officer he came into contact with. Everybody was always thinking about their future and their prospects. He thought that maybe this knowledge had helped him get to where he was today.

  He tabbed down the inventory of options on the screen in front of him until he got to ‘Victim Search’. He pressed the Enter key and received a second list, which he scanned before tabbing to ‘Search By Name/Date’ and pressing Enter again. Before entering any details, Special Agent O’Neill glanced around quickly to make sure that Lineker was still in his office. When he saw that he was, he quickly typed in the word ‘Riley’ and the year ‘1990’ before using the mouse on the right of the keyboard to click on the ‘OK’ option and waiting as a box in the center of the monitor’s screen informed him that the search was in progress.